A “Don’t be a Jerk” campaign is being mapped out down at City Hall by Seattle City Council member Sally Bagshaw. She’s drawing a bead on impatient motorists who stick out in intersections and block corners of pedestrian crossings.

As part of a strategy to “enforce violations,” Bagshaw wants to bring traffic surveillance cameras downtown to spot scofflaws.

Just by looking around, however, a salient question comes up: Why are drivers being singled out as jerks in a city where actions by building contractors and boneheaded, long-delayed projects by the Washington and Seattle transportation departments (e.g. the tunnel and seawall replacement) are principal causes of congestion?

Seattle City Council member Sally Bagshaw wants traffic cameras downtown to “enforce violations” against motorists. What about construction messes that cause congestion?

A drive down Battery Street several months back, in rush hour traffic at about 4:25 p.m., demonstrated why drivers should not be demonized.

Between Third and Fourth Avenues, the right (bus-only) lane was being blocked by an SDOT crew that was painting bus-only markings on the street. The construction project forced a long, articulated Metro bus into the lane where cars are still permitted to drive.

A couple of blocks later, the builder of the two new towers on Sixth Avenue was blocking Battery while some large piece of heavy equipment was maneuvered into (or out of) place. Usually, the challenge has been weaving around construction and dodging dump trucks on the Sixth Avenue side.

Naturally, traffic backed up on Battery. I spotted at least four cars that Sally Bagshaw would have ticketed for being in pedestrian crossings or infringing on the bus lanes.

A modest suggestion: Why not also ticket ANYBODY — including a city agency and a well-connected contractor — who blocks lanes of a major arterial at rush hour? Streets like Battery and Virginia are already bad-news places to drive. Penalize the developers, but slap a double or triple fine on such agencies as City Light and SDOT, which are supposed to facilitate movement of citizens through the city.

The late, great California Congressman Phil Burton left us an epitaph with his words: “When you’re dealing with exploiters, the first thing you need to do is terrorize the bastards.” He was targeting the timber industry, then blocking expansion of Redwoods National Park so it could clear-cut ancient trees. But the principle has wide application.

When looking for causes of congestion, and behavior-altering penalties, Bagshaw should think outside the box of officialdom. An alternative list of violations to enforce should include:

— Blocking lanes in a way that creates danger: The downtown intersection of Seventh and Westlake is a perfect example. Traffic is forced way over to the left by a construction project that consumes much of the street. Recently, this writer was nearly hit as a big construction rig turned out of a contractor-seized right lane, directly in front of two cars moving forward on a green light.

— Forcing pedestrians and bicyclists into traffic: A few months ago, in one day, I found myself a pedestrian evading cars near Second and Virginia, and hours later as a motorist dodging pedestrians in the same block. City fathers (and mothers) have done almost nothing when these problems — and their locations — are constantly pointed out. A suitably painful penalty? Shut down projects until provision for pedestrians and bicyclists is made.

Obstructions caused by city departments, contractors and long-delayed projects (Seawall, tunnel) are outside the scope of the “Don’t be a Jerk!” traffic safety campaign of Council Member Sally Bagshaw (right).

— Turning streets into a maze: Constantly shifting lanes on Dexter Avenue have made up one small piece of the new Mercer Street mess. Creators of the new mess have motorists crossing bike lanes to turn. There’s a green light to cross Mercer on Dexter, but a red light prohibiting right turns. A diagram of the lanes looks like Hillary Clinton’s 1990s health care plan.

— The “Seattle swivel”: Mayor Ed Murray mentioned this recent public endangerment, just north of City Hall, recently in a promise to do better. Traffic turning left from Madison onto Fifth Avenue was forced right by a construction-caused lane closure. Two blocks later, traffic was forced to merge left by another lane closure. Warning signs were markedly absent.

— The mess that never ends: Our city’s political elite flock to the Westin each spring for good-cause breakfasts and luncheons. One wonders whether Bagshaw and her colleagues bothered to notice the months-long mess and lane closure just across from the hotel on Virginia Street. The backups have persisted for months — now joined by a construction closure between Sixth and Seventh — on a route heavily used by Metro buses.

In her zeal, Bagshaw should start entertaining ways to protect the people who already live here — and are getting pushed around and endangered by growth. Unrestrained growth is, remember, the ideology of a cancer cell.

The prospect of a shutdown, with the requirement of remediation plans, is an ideal way to apply Phil Burton’s law to contractors messing up our streets. So is making Seattle city departments pay fines into the city treasury.

Other ideas: We could penalize the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) by taking away parking stalls in the City Hall garage and opening space to normal citizens doing business with the city. Or SDOT’s somewhat patronizing Director Scott Kubly could be required to take audience questions at any and all public meetings he attends.

How can we “Move Seattle” if lanes and streets downtown are blocked by badly regulated construction? (Photo by Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com)

Sally Bagshaw wants money collected from motorists to be invested in better Metro transit service. However, how can bus service be improved if buses are caught in gridlock caused by blocked lanes? Or the blocking of whole streets?

A better use for the money: Repair streets.

Develop an inventory of all the places affixed with “Fix This Street” signs as City Hall campaigned for its $365 million Bridging the Gap levy nine years ago. Put together a list of these streets that have not been fixed. A spot to begin would be Union Street, just two blocks from where Murray, Kubly & Co. rolled out this year’s $930 million “replacement” Move Seattle levy.

The bottom line: Sally Bagshaw has left out a big load of Jerks in her campaign for safer downtown streets.